From the standpoint of the Salish Sea Early Music Festival and as Tobias Hume asserted in 1605, "Now to use a modest shortness, and a brief expression of my self to all noble spirits": Les Voix Humaines is simply phenomenal!

LISTEN: Les Voix Humaines plays Sieur de Sainte-Colombe's Les Pleurs - Chaconne Le rapporté

In 1676, Thomas Mace accurately expressed their sentiments: "I have been more Sensibly, Fervently, and Zealously Captivated, and drawn into Divine Raptures, and Contemplations, by Those Unexpressible Rhetorical, Uncontroulable Perswasions, and Instructions of Musicks Divine Language."

A perfect description of their vision of music making, Sloane wrote c.1794: "There must be an Order and just Proportion, Intricacy with Simplicity in the Component parts, Variety in the Mass, and Light and Shadow in the whole, so as to produce the varied sensations of gaiety and melancholy, of wildness and even surprise and wonder…"

And as Thomas Mace says in 1676: "…When we come to be Masters… we can command all manner of Time, at our own Pleasures; we Then take Liberty for Humour and good Adornment-sake, to Break Time; sometimes Faster, sometimes Slower, as we perceive, the Nature of the Thing Requires, which…adds much Grace and Luster to the Performance."

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Saturday, March 8, 2025 at 6:30 PM: 

— FRENCH BAROQUE TRIO SONATAS

     with MUSICA ALTA RIPA
   · Anne Röhrig, violin
   · Bernward Lohr, harpsichord
   · Susie Napper, viola da gamba
   · Jeffrey Cohan, baroque flute

French trio sonatas and quartets spanning more than 60 years, through the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis V, alongside a "Paris Quartet" by Georg Philipp Telemann, written for Telemann's visit to Paris in 1738.

Marin Marais (1656 – 1728) 

 — Trio C major (1682)
Jean-Baptiste Quentin, the young (before 1690 – ca. 1742)

 — Trio in G minor Opus 8 No. 1 (after 1729)
Louis-Gabriel Guillemain (1705 – 1770) 

 — Trio Sonata No. 3 in D Minor (1743)
Jean-Marie Leclair l'aîné (1697 – 1764)

 — Violin Sonata in A Minor
Joseph Bodin de Boismortier (1689 – 1755)

 — Trio Sonata Opus 37 No. 2 in e minor (1732)

MUSICA ALTA RIPA
Harpsichordist BERNWARD LOHR is director of Hanover's Musica Alta Ripa, one of Germany's most active and extensively recorded period instrument ensembles. Baroque violinist ANNE RÖHRIG, leads the Hannoversche Hofkapelle (the "Hanover Court Orchestra"), another of the premier baroque orchestras that contributes to the vibrant early music scene in Hannover and Northern Germany. “Hannover” originally evolved from "Hohes Ufer", meaning "high riverbank" or "Alta Ripa" in Latin. Bernward Lohr and Anne Röhrig are professors at music conservatories in both Hannover and Nuremburg, Germany. Their more than 30 recordings have garnered many of the most important awards in Europe for recordings including the Diapason Dòr, the Cannes Classical Award, the German Recording Critics' Prize, and several times the coveted Echo Klassik Award. Both were awarded the 2002 Music Award of Lower Saxony.

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Saturday, May 3 at 6:30 PM: — The MUSIQUE DE LA CHAMBRE of LOUIS XIV
 · Caroline Nicolas, viola da gamba
 · William Simms, baroque guitar
 · Jeffrey Cohan, baroque flute

The MUSIQUE DE LA CHAMBRE of LOUIS XIV features music by prominent soloists, all composers, who frequently played for Louis XIV, including the king’s guitar instructor Robert De Visée and his Italian predecessor Francesco Corbetta, along with a favorite viola da gambist at the court, Marin Marais and his teacher Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, as well as Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, a young harpsichordist and one of the few famous female musicians of her time whose playing and compositions Louis deeply admired and subsidized.

This program stands apart in a variety of ways. Jeffrey Cohan discovered the earliest known French solo specifically for the transverse flute by the king’s court music librarian André Danican Philidor L'Aisné in a relatively unknown and as yet unpublished manuscript which was prepared in 1695 by Philidor himself as a present from Louis XIV for the Duke of Bavaria. Marin Marais asserted that his music for viola da gamba might be played on the transverse flute, as is to be realized in a Suite from his first book of pieces for viola da gamba. Similarly a sonata by Jacquet de La Guerre assumes new resonance in our realization for transverse flute, gamba and guitar. Caroline Nicolas and William Simms will perform solos for viola da gamba and guitar by De Visée, Corbetta and Sainte-Colombe.

The French musical perspective emulated reason and moderation, with sensory perception serving comprehension. French musicians aspired to thrill the senses via the intellect, in a continual search for grace and elegance. Dance was viewed as the consummate expression of the mastery of body and mind and the epitome of aristocratic art, as evidenced by Louis XIV's daily dance lessons for 20 years alongside frequent guitar lessons. Every French court and church musician reflected musically their determination to depict refinement and true sentiments, while dispensing with excessive turbulence and contrast. All of this contrasted greatly with the Italian focus on the direct expression of emotions via their virtuoso and flamboyant approach, which was indeed admired in some circles in France.

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Sat., May 24 at 6:30 PM: — CONCERTI from the COURT of FREDERICK THE GREAT
   · David Schrader, harpsichord
   · Jeffrey Cohan, baroque flute
   · Elizabeth Phelps, baroque violin
   · Courtney Kuroda, baroque violin
   · Christine Moran, baroque viola
   · Susie Napper, baroque cello
          A concerto by Frederick II, the monarch of Prussia from 1740, will be included alongside the Suite in B Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach, whose visit to the king's court in 1747 is legendary, and concerti by Frederick's keyboardist Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach for both harpsichord and flute.